marketing that sells, marketing that smells

Advertising on Spotify

I really like Spotify, more so than Last FM, and its cool too see a new, legal music channel take off so rapidly. Anyone who uses Spotify will know that the service is free as long as you are happy to listen to one ad (although now this is frequently 2) every 5 – 6 songs or so. Also employed are banner ads within the UI.

In the 4 months or so I’ve been using Spotify, there have been various different ad campaigns kicking around, from directgov with its jungle explorer style music, to Zane-Lowe-voiced music ads. The most famous ad of all is probably Spotify’s own, in which the delectable Roberta tempts your earholes with her sultry tones in an attempt to get you to upgrade to Spotify Premium (although worryingly Roberta has recently been replaced by a bloke – not nearly as good!)

It’s the music ads I wanted to focus on here, as I think they will come to dominate the advertising on Spotify. There are a variety of different ways they have been done so far, some better than others. In the vast majority these ads are promoting new music and play quick snippets of new material in their 30 second length: pretty much like a radio ad.

The destinations for these ads are where the variation comes in:

Pointing to the artists website – problem: the artist’s site automatically starts playing music, overlaying what you’re trying to listen to in Spotify. Verdict = horrible.

Pointing to a sales site – the problem I have with this is how many people are going to buy based on just hearing a clip?

I always expect to be taken to a playlist when I hear an ad, even now I’ve been using the service for so long. It just seems like a natural progression. To my mind, the ideal Spotify music ad would be something like this:

Ad begins – make it clear you can click to hear the artist now in Spotify

If ad is clicked, a banner ad appears in the UI with a “find out more” or “buy now” message.

Some really good spotify ad campaigns are based around UGC playlists – the new film “I Love You, Man”, is one of my favourites so far, which has a ‘bromance’ playlist when you click thru. Other ad formats include releasing albums early exclusively on Spotify (e.g. U2), or some content (e.g. Lady Sovereign’s new album, Jigsaw) been made available exclusively on Spotify Premium.

Spotify UI with "I Love You Man" banner ad

The service is barely 7 months old, so it’s going to be interesting to see how ads in this channel develop, especially if Spotify do what all iPhone users are praying they will and release an app. So long as they continue to minimise the presence of Jo Whiley I’ll be a big fan of the service…

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